“Tom Terrific” had his great moment w/ Chicago, no matter how some forget

Tom Seaver was one of the great ballplayers of the 1970s – a star pitcher whom some would call the best of the decade. And while he’s in the baseball Hall of Fame for his days with the New York Mets, we shouldn’t forget the stint he had with the Chicago White Sox.

Sox won't forget Seaver anytime soon

Seaver popped up back in the news this week when his family made an announcement that, at age 75, he has been diagnosed with dementia. He’s going to suffer the malady of memory loss in his old age – to the point where the Seaver family says he’s through with having a public life.

HE INTENDS TO live out his days at the vineyard he has operated in California, doing some work, but mostly trying to enjoy a retirement.

Yet thinking of Seaver brings back to mind the stint he did with the White Sox in the mid-1980s.

It was only by pure fluke, and Mets mismanagement, that he came to Chicago at all for the 1984 season. Under the rules that existed then, the Mets left Seaver unprotected on their roster – mostly figuring that at his late-30s age, no one would try to claim him.

But the White Sox had just won a division title in 1983 and came close to making a World Series appearance, and also had the fairly new ownership of Jerry Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn who were eager to try to stir up attention for the ball club.

HENCE, THE WHITE SOX made a claim to Seaver, and he wound up deciding to come to Chicago after all – leaving the Mets where he was considered something of a team legend.

The baseball logic of the move was that a veteran pitcher like Seaver could help put the White Sox over the top and make them champions. It didn’t quite work out that way.

Seaver in 1984 won 15 games – the most of any White Sox starter that season. But the rest of the team slumped to a 5^th place, 74-win, 88-loss record. The previous season’s Cy Young Award winner as best American League pitcher Lamarr Hoyt finished with a losing record, and eventually was traded away for future star shortstop Ozzie Guillen.

Seaver pitched for the White Sox through early 1986, and wound up winning 33 games during his time wearing the “license plate SOX” uniforms whose design the team still loves to pay homage to on Sundays.

On receiving end of Seaver achievement

AND WHILE SOME people like to go out of their way to minimize the fact that Seaver ever pitched in Chicago, one can’t ignore the fact that one of the highlights of his overall career came during those years.

I’m referring to Aug. 4, 1985 when Seaver pitched a complete game victory against the New York Yankees – which turned out to be the 300^th victory of his career. The shorthand statistic that verifies Seaver’s place as one of the best pitchers ever.

Perhaps it was only so appropriate that the White Sox played that game on the road at Yankee Stadium. Meaning so many of the Mets fans who had cheered Seaver on 
throughout his peak years got to see his great moment – and took to rooting for the White Sox to whomp the Yanks on their own home turf.

Throughout their baseball history, the White Sox have had more than their share of aging ballplayers who did a stint in a “Chicago” uniform. Take Steve Carlton – the man most often tossed up as challenging Seaver for “best pitcher” of the ‘70s.

IN 1986, CARLTON pitched for three teams, including the White Sox, for whom he won four of the nine victories he achieved that season, before the Sox let him go to.

His Hall of Fame moments outside of Sox

Carlton’s mediocrity bordering on forgettability in a White Sox uniform is more typical than that of the Seaver story – who has earned himself a place as possibly the best star ballplayer for another team to enhance Chicago.

Some, I’m sure, will argue it’s really Carlton Fisk – the one-time Boston Red Sox catcher who wound up playing for the White Sox through the 1980s and into the early 1990s. Who, by all coincidences, was the catcher in Seaver’s 300^th victory.

It’s a moment that will live on in baseball highlight videos, and perhaps that’s good. Because it’s not likely Seaver himself will be able to recall much of the great baseball moment, as the passage of time and the frailty of the human body takes its toll.

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EXTRA: Enjoying while it lasts! White Sox in 1st AND better than Cubs

The baseball fan of Chicago in me couldn’t help but get a kick out of Saturday.

Dos jonrons against los Tigres de Detroit

The Chicago White Sox continued the winning streak they seemed to have slipped in and finished the day with a record of 13 wins, 9 losses. Which, by the way, puts them in first place in their American League division.

CERTAINLY NOT A place that some baseball pundits would have expected the White Sox to even experience a taste of this season. Particularly those who were determined to believe Chicago’s Sout’ Side ball club is the worst in the game.

Created a souvenir for Boston baseball fan

It also is a place that Chicago Cubs fans would despise, because it’s supposed to be their ballclub that is on the verge of a dynasty that will win championship after championship for Chicago. But on Saturday, following their win over the Boston Red Sox, the Cubs have a record of 13 wins, 10 losses.

It’s early in the season; nobody should be paying serious attention to standings until the Memorial Day weekend at the earliest. And yes, things could change drastically (and completely) by Monday.

But for the one day, those people who find Chicago Cubs fan braggadocio to be arrogant and annoying can take some joy in a White Sox team is superior. Though they should also note that, for the day at least, the New York Yankees at 15-7 are the best in the game.

AS FOR SATURDAY’S ballgames, I managed to watch both because I have a step-grandmother who, at 95, really shouldn’t be left alone anymore. She also has a new television (HD and all) and cable, and often likes to wile away her time with ballgames.

So I got to see Jose Abreu’s two home runs, and the extra inning shot by Melky Cabrera that gave the White Sox a 6-4 win, despite relief pitcher David Robertson’s best efforts to give away the game to the Detroit Tigers.

A fan in the stands

I also saw that Anthony Rizzo home run that I’m sure made Cubs fans happy despite the 469-foot home run hit by Hanley Ramirez -- the longest-ever at Fenway Park during the Statcast era of measuring such things. Which it turns out dates merely back to two years ago.

Although I have to admit to getting my kick from seeing one-time White Sox all-star Carlton Fisk sitting in the stands in Boston and watching as the other ball club that once employed him took on the allegedly high-and-mighty baby blue bears of the north lakefront!

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Who knew back then that early '80s White Sox had pair of Hall of Famers?

I recall the Chicago White Sox of the early 1980s as being some fairly dismal ball clubs – Bill Veeck might have been gone, but the new ownership of the team didn’t do much better on the field.

New White Sox Hall of Famer

One division title in 1983 (the first time a Chicago baseball team ever finished a season in first place in the era of playoffs), along with a lot of losing records.

BUT AFTER MONDAY, those teams area going to be remembered for the pair of people they had who are now members of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Catcher Carlton Fisk, who came to the White Sox in 1981, has been in the Hall of Fame for many years now. But the veterans committee that considers non-players, along with giving ballplayers a second chance, on Monday put in team manager Tony LaRussa.

He’s actually one of three managers picked for the Hall of Fame based off their activities of the 1990s.

But all had been managing since the late 1970s – including LaRussa, who got his first major league managing job with the White Sox in the year that the disco-hating meatheads claimed they were making a political statement, of sorts, by tearing up the turf at Comiskey Park.

CHICAGO WOUND UP being the learning experience for LaRussa, who after leaving the White Sox in 1986 went on to managing jobs in Oakland and St. Louis – both of which resulted in him winning league championships and World Series titles.

Which is why I’m sure many people are going to think of the White Sox as the afterthought of his career. Although back in the early 1980s, it would have been regarded as a better bet that George Steinbrenner and Billy Martin of the New York Yankees would be picked for the Hall of Fame someday -- both were passed over on Monday.

Will he be joined by 'the Big Hurt?'

It could be argued that if not for Veeck and later Jerry Reinsdorf, there never would have been a LaRussa manager. He would have been just a journeyman ballplayer (whose career included one end-of-season stint with a mediocre Chicago Cubs team of the early 1970s) who wound up having to use that law degree he earned while younger in order to earn a living.

Did the White Sox spare us from yet another blowhard attorney? If so, that might well be a significant accomplishment by itself.

Chose Boston recognition for Hall

ALTHOUGH THE IDEA that those White Sox teams had two members who will now be regarded among fans as “baseball immortals” seems like such a stretch. It certainly wasn’t reflected on the playing field.

Especially not in 1984 when Hall of Fame members LaRussa and Fisk were joined by another future Hall of Famer – pitcher Tom Seaver. Big names for a lot of disappointment.

Then again, any fan of the Chicago Bulls of the mid-1980s (when Michael Jordan was surrounded by athletic dreck) ought to realize that a lone ballplayer isn’t enough to make up a team.

Consider that when the White Sox finally went on to win a league championship and World Series title in 2005, they did so with a team that many people think will wind up with NO Hall of Fame members other than Frank Thomas – whom we might learn next month will be elected to the Hall of Fame from the ranks of recently-retired ballplayers.

EVEN THEN, THOMAS was injured most of the season and didn’t play a single inning of playoff or World Series ball – Carl Everett was the “big bat” designated hitter that season.

Will 'Hawk' join the Hall someday?

So come July, White Sox fans will have something to celebrate in that a former manager is being immortalized. Even if it means that broadcaster Ken Harrelson will have to re-tell the stories of his one-year stint as a baseball general manager when he became the only person to ever fire LaRussa from a job.

Then again, it’s also possible some year that Harrelson will get the Ford Frick Award that the Hall of Fame gives out annually to broadcasters of excellence. Yet another White Sox Hall of Famer whose career somehow manages to exceed the overall level of performance on the playing field.

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EDITOR'S NOTE: For the record, Tony LaRussa got elected to the Hall of Fame on the same date that Gov. Pat Quinn proclaimed to be "Mike Ditka Day" in Illinois -- in honor of the fact that the Chicago Bears retired one-time coach Ditka's old uniform number 89 from his days as a player.

EXTRA: Who had the worst week?

It wasn’t a good week for Chicago’s former baseball icons.

Most of the attention went to Ozzie Guillen, the former All Star shortstop-turned-World Series-winning manager who lost his job as manager of the Miami Marlins.

TEAM OWNER JEFFREY Loria is of the mindset that Ozzie was the problem with his last-place ballclub – even though it appears that the Marlins ballplayers by-and-large enjoyed having Ozzie around.

Which means this may well be an example of the chaotic nature of the Marlins’ baseball organization.

But Guillen wasn’t the only ballplayer to get himself in the news. And at least he kept himself sober!

Guillen’s former White Sox teammate, Carlton Fisk, got himself national attention (that’s what he gets for being a Hall of Fame ballplayer) when he was found barely conscious sitting in a truck parked in the middle of a cornfield near suburban New Lenox.

FISK USED TO live there (and also in nearby Lockport), but now is among the many who have retired to Florida. But nobody knows exactly what he was doing there at that time – although police say they found open liquor in his vehicle.

So now Fisk has to face a DUI-type charge. He is scheduled to appear in court again late in November. He may well lose his driver’s license for a time. He has added a line to his eventual obituary – although I suspect it won’t erase the images of him trying to wave “fair” his home run from the 1975 World Series (the only one he ever got to play in during a two-decade-long career).

Yet that comes across as better than that of Mark Grace, the one-time Chicago Cubs first baseman whom some fans think ought to be a Hall of Famer (others disagree, and not so respectfully).

He lost his job as a broadcaster with the Arizona Diamondbacks after a DUI arrest of his own earlier this year. Team officials say it wasn’t his first such incident, and he had been warned.

YET HE NOW has bigger concerns than trying to find a new job. It seems that authorities in Arizona came up with a criminal indictment related to his arrest.

His case will be more than a standard DUI incident. This will have the potential to mar his life for awhile, and will be more than just a single line in his eventual life’s story.

Which means that Guillen may well be the most fortunate of the batch. For he had a four-year contract to manage the Marlins (of which he only worked one year). He still gets paid!

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